1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to methods and devices for monitoring the exposure of an article to physical or environmental conditions during a transport of the article. More particularly, the invention relates to ways of estimating the integrity of a transported article as assessed from the exposure of the article to physical or environmental conditions during the transport. The invention relates to methods and apparatuses according to the opening clauses of the claims. Such devices find application, e.g., when sensitive or delicate goods are transported, such as pharmaceutical products or foods or other fragile goods.
2. Description of Related Art
When sensitive or delicate goods such as pharmaceutical products or foods or fragile goods are transported, it can be desirable to monitor their exposure to specific hazards such as particularly high or low temperatures, particularly high or low humidity (water-content of ambient air), or particularly strong impacts (hits, blows), so as to be able to estimate the integrity of the transported goods.
Tags for accomplishing such tasks are known in the art. E.g., from US 2005/0157774 A1, a temperature monitor suitable for such purposes is known.
In conjunction with similar tags, it is suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 7,487,037 B2 to provide a method of evaluating the pedigree and/or integrity of a package transported from a source location to a destination location comprising the steps of                receiving information from an electronic device associated with the package, such as a tag, at an authentication appliance at the destination location,        transmitting at least a first portion of the information from the authentication appliance to a server,        receiving from the server a network address of an authentication computer to be used to evaluate the pedigree and/or integrity of the package,        after receiving the network address from the server, transmitting at least a second portion of the information from the authentication appliance to the authentication computer at the network address, and        with the authentication computer, comparing at least the second portion of the information with data stored in a database to make a determination concerning the pedigree and/or integrity of the package.        
In other words, having arrived at a destination location, data are retrieved from the tag associated with the package, sent to a (remote) computer and evaluated there, so as to determine the pedigree and/or integrity of the package.
It can be desirable to make the monitoring of transported packages more secure.